(a) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a thin film transistor array panel, and particularly to a thin firm transistor array panel for a liquid crystal display.
(b) Description of Related Art
A liquid crystal display (LCD) is one of the most widely used flat panel displays. An LCD includes two panels provided with field-generating electrodes such as pixel electrodes and a common electrode, a liquid crystal (LC) layer interposed therebetween, and at least one polarizer attached to the panel(s). The LCD displays images by applying voltages to the field-generating electrodes to generate an electric field in the LC layer, which determines orientations of LC molecules in the LC layer to adjust polarization of incident light thereby displaying images.
Among the LCDs, a vertical alignment (VA) mode LCD, which aligns LC molecules such that the long axes of the LC molecules are perpendicular to the panels in absence of electric field is spotlighted because of its high contrast ratio and wide reference viewing angle.
The wide viewing angle of the VA mode LCD can be realized by cutouts in the field-generating electrodes and protrusions on the field-generating electrodes. Since the cutouts and the protrusions can determine the tilt directions of the LC molecules, the tilt directions can be distributed into several directions by appropriately arranging the cutouts and the protrusions such that the reference viewing angle is widened.
However, the VALCD has relatively poor lateral visibility compared with front visibility. In order to improve the lateral visibility, it is suggested that a pixel is divided into two subpixels having different voltages.
One of the improvements suggests that a driving circuit generates individual data voltages for the two subpixels and supplies the generated voltages to the subpixels. However, the driving scheme is complicated. Another of the improvements suggests that the two subpixels are once supplied with the same data voltage and the voltages of the subpixels are differentiated later by using capacitors. However, the voltages of the subpixels may not be expectedly controlled and may not be uniform.